You know, I’ve been following this Kobe Bryant case and the thing just seems pretty fishy to me. First of all, Kobe Bryant is like the most polite and the most handsome, not to mention the best basketball player in the NBA. He had been picked as the spokesperson for the new generation of NBA stars by the corporations that are always so quick to latch on to somebody to sell whatever shitty product they want young kids to think they can’t live without. He is the last person that should need to rape anybody.
Let me be strait about one thing. I hate the guy and I hate the Lakers. The Lakers I hate because they are the second worst example of what American professional sports can deteriorate into. The worst are the Yankees, second worst is the Lakers. I mean, can anybody really give a shit about baseball? Every year it is the same old thing, Yankees win, Yankees win, Yankees win. The only reason I’ll even crack one eyelid is in the hope that somebody managed to beat those assholes, and they never do. And why do you think they win? Because their payroll is 60 million dollars more than everybody else’s! That’s why! Of course you’re going to win when you have all the money and advantages behind you.
The Lakers do the same thing but in a different kind of way. I believe there is a salary cap in basketball (but don’t quote me on that, and no I’m not going to bother to go and look it up) but the Lakers manage to get around that by being the super-duper Jack Nicholson market. Theoretically there are no advantages for any NBA city, but the Lakers offers the chance for regular players to become Hollywood superstars. That’s going to sell, and marquee players are going to rush to that team and take much less than they otherwise would simply because their are external advantages that make up for the pay cut.
And Kobe Bryant, well he pisses me off for all the reasons I listed before. He is young, handsome, the best athlete in his game, and he makes millions of dollars. Do you know what all this adds up to? HE CAN HAVE ANY GIRL HE WANTS! That’s why I hate him. But if you’re going to try and bring him down you have to use some other tactic than rape. I just don’t believe this guy is a rapist. It doesn’t make sense.
Put it this way. Take away all the newspapers and all the lights and all the media attention. Take away the indignation that always comes up whenever anybody brings up the issue of rape. Take all that away and ask yourself this question: If you had a daughter who was 19 and attractive, would you trust her to be in the same room with Kobe Bryant?
I would. Without hesitation. I’m not concerned with the guy. I don’t think he’s a threat.
Now, I wouldn’t be comfortable if she was in the same room as Warren Sapp, or Mike Tyson, or Charles Manson, or any other of a hundred other people at intermediate rungs on the ladder, but Kobe Bryant I’m not worried about.
But let’s get to the actual facts of the case. The rumor is that Kobe’s accuser was recently hospitalized as a threat to herself. This means that she is a bit crazy. There is just no way around that. It’s a fact, it’s in the books. An established authority decided that the girl was a little off her rocker.
But the debate has been whether or not that is admissible. How could that not be admissible? But whatever, let’s leave that alone for now and move onto the next troubling piece of information.
The next troubling piece of information was that semen from a man other than Kobe Bryant was found on the underwear that Kobe’s accuser wore to her hospital examination.
Hmmmmmmm. Sounds like we’re dealing with a real princess here alright.
But the debate is continuing now as to whether that is admissible! Now, I know I’m not a lawyer, but that little piece of evidence seems pretty fucking relevant.
So, in my curious questing to see what is going on I came across a strange set of circumstances. It seems that there is some special law in Colorado that is designed to protect rape victims when they come to trial. Now, as a matter of theory, I’m completely in agreement with that. However, where I start to have a problem is when you write a law where the language is so one-sided that the law becomes easily abused. In one document I found some state official made the comment that, “even prostitutes can be raped.”
I’m not sure what to do with that statement. On the one hand my mind immediately goes to the valient Satine in Les Miserables (is it Satine who is the mother of Cosette? I can’t remember for sure and I’m not going to look it up). Satine is forced to the streets to earn money to feed her infant daughter. She is noble and charitable and forced into prostitution because of the cruel faults in a society that has pushed her into a corner. I think of Satine and I am willing to stand by the statement that even prostitutes can be raped, and that damn it, there should be a law to protect them!
But once the fire and brimstone has cooled off, my rational mind takes over and I revert back to thinking about what the character of prostitutes really is. The majority of them aren’t noble women who have been pushed into an unsavory position. The majority are lazy manipulaitve bitches who will do whatever they can to get out of doing any real work. How much do you think Heidi Fleiss’ girls were getting to do whatever it was they were doing to Charlie Sheen? Don’t tell me it wasn’t a big rush for them to be banging a big movie star and to be making five or ten thousand dollars to boot.
People once thought that any person who had a multitude of sexual partners probably wasn’t of the highest character. I’m not talking about five or whatever partners in a year, I’m talking about a new partner every day. I think if a person like this accuses somebody of rape it means a hell of a lot less than an accusation from a person with a history of monogamy.
What am I getting to?
That damn right a person’s sexual history is relevant in a rape case and shouldn’t be excluded to protect the accuser.
Didn’t anybody consider that the situation is now truly ripe for an unscrupulous woman to lure some man into her house, have sex with him, and then threaten to take him to this extremely biased court on the accusation of rape if he doesn’t fork over a truckload of hard earned cash? It would be an act sort of like prostitution, only with a lot less of the actual work and a lot more of the money. Seems like the kind of job a prostitute might be interested in doesn’t it?
And don’t dismiss how damaging that accusation of rape is, even if it proves completely groundless. And proving something is completely groundless is pretty tough this day and age considering you are pretty much open to a sexual assault accusation even if you were ever simply seen in the presence of the accusing woman.
Let’s get back to Kobe on that. I read right after the accusation that Kobe’s image suffered such a blow from the accusation that he was going to lose something close to half a billion dollars in sponsorship money.
Half a billion dollars!
And here’s the thing, that money’s gone. Just the accusation took it. Consider it a half a billion dollar fee. That punishment has already been dealt out and it came even before a lawyer or anybody was involved.
Doesn’t that seem like a pretty substantial punishment to have to pay? I mean, if Kobe had been forced to pay a half a billion dollars to starving children of the world, wouldn’t that have made up for whatever unlawful act he had committed?
Getting back to the Satine image, perhaps Kobe’s accuser could have done a little research and realized the ramificatons of her position and called Kobe up and said look buddy, I’ve got your balls in a sling, but if you give half a billion dollars to starving children, I won’t say anything about it. She could have even asked for a million herself and I wouldn’t have begrudged her. Wouldn’t that have done more universal good?
But no, the money was just lost and we’re on our way to trial.
Still, my final point is this. When this is all over and the smoke clears either Kobe is going to be found guilty and punished or he is going to be found innocent and let to go free. But if Kobe is innocent, didn’t this girl still make this horrible accusation and destroy Kobe’s credibility and sabotage his ability to make that half billion dollars? Shouldn’t there be a consequence for that?
What exactly is the consequence for a false accusation of rape?
I think it is admirable that our society is so adamant against rape, but we really can’t have a system that allows this sense of goodwill to be taken advantage of. It’s just logical. And there are unscrupulous people on both sides of the sexes, don’t be so naive as to think they aren’t there. To not think so is more disrespectful to women, especially the vast majority of hard-working, highly-moral, good women, than anything else I can think of.
The End